We Don't Eat
by Shira Lansys
Summary: We don't eat until your fathers at the table / We don't drink until the devils turned to dust / Never once has any man I've met been able to love / So if i were you, I'd have a little trust. SherlockJohn


_I moved to the coast, under a mountain  
Swam in the ocean, slept on my own  
At dawn I would watch the sun, cut ribbons through the bay  
I'd remember all, the things my mother wrote_

_That we don't eat until your fathers at the table  
We don't drink until the devils turned to dust  
Never once has any man I've met been able to love  
So if i were you, I'd have a little trust_

James Vincent McMorrow – We Don't Eat

Every time John looked at Sherlock, he'd remember his mother from back when Harry and he were children. She'd been a kind, involved mother; the sort that knitted half their clothes and attended each and every one of their school plays. Unfortunately, by the time John and Harry were old enough to listen to her words, she was already "Halfway off the deep end", as his uncle had put it once, and very staunch in her rules, and the pieces of advice she'd bestowed upon her two children.

The first rule was that they weren't allowed to begin dinner until their father was home. As a child, John didn't know why this was such an important rule – it was still something he didn't understand as an adult. His parents' relationship had been far from typical; one might say it had been far from healthy. While he hadn't beaten her or anything like that, John's father had never shown a lot of affection towards his mother.

For her part, she didn't like her husband very much either.

But, regardless of the reason, the meal could not be started without their father present. John had a vivid memory of the night his father had been in a car accident. He'd been eight, and Harry twelve – just old enough to insist that everyone call her by her shortened name, but young enough that her complete rebellion had yet to begin. They were sitting at the table, with the food growing cold in their dishes. He'd been starving – it had been rugby night, he remembered, and he was always hungry after practice.

His father was usually punctual, but that night all three of them were left waiting. Ten minutes passed, and then twenty. Harry and John became bored and began kicking each other under the table. At half an hour, Harry broached the idea of eating without him; their mother screamed at her in a tone that John would never forget.

An hour later and they were at the hospital, still without having eaten. Their mother absentmindedly gave them money for the vending machines, where both children proceeded to fill themselves up on junk food that they would never have been allowed to have for dinner under normal circumstances.

Every time without fail he sat down at a table to eat, he thought of that night. Sometimes he pondered over it for quite a long time, although usually it was a stray thought that was gone as soon as it had arrived. Regardless, it was always accompanied by a tinge of regret and sadness. Sadness at his mother's passing, and regret because the little boy in him couldn't help wondering that, perhaps if he'd followed her numerous other small rules more strictly, she wouldn't have gotten as bad as she was. If he'd done as she'd asked without question, mayhap she would still be alive.

He always shook these thoughts off as soon as he caught himself thinking them. He was a professional doctor; he knew in his head that his mother's madness was not caused by his or Harry's disobedience, and that her death was a medical condition that no amount of playing along with her delusions could have changed. Still, his heart could not help but wonder.

Her second rule was one John followed to this day. Both his mother's parents had been raging alcoholics, and she'd grown up in a household where there was not a single night that her parents were sober. As a result, alcohol was something completely banned from the house – even his father, who his mother obeyed almost unconditionally, bowed down to her on this one.

John wondered whether it was because his mother had been so determined on this that Harry had started drinking. He remembered the first time she'd come home drunk – not absolutely intoxicated like she would the next night, only a little tipsy. But drunk enough for their parents to notice.

That was what started the downward spiral. At the beginning, it was only once a week that Harry would sneak out of the house to go party with her friends. Then it was every few days, then every second day, until finally she was coming back each and every morning totally pissed, knocking on John's window at five am and begging him to not tell their mother.

He never did, but somehow she knew anyway.

Then, after his mother had been taken away, his father began drinking. It started off with a whiskey after dinner. Then after a month of this, it was two whiskeys, until finally in the evenings he was so out of it Harry could just walk out the front door without even being asked where she was going.

It was then that John decided that, if his mother had been right about anything, it was her alcohol rule. He didn't want to end up like his father or his sister, so to resist the temptation he avoided drinking wherever possible.

But it was her last rule that preyed on his mind these days; the advice that, for all her rebellion, Harry had followed incredibly strictly.

"Never fall in love," their mother would tell Harry, as she dished them up breakfast.

"Men will only break your heart," she'd say darkly as she signed Harry's suspension form for showing up at school drunk. "There isn't a man out there who'll love you. They say they do, but they lie."

While John didn't really think their mother's words were really the cause of Harry's sexual orientation, he couldn't help but admire the irony.

He told Sherlock about his mother one day. About her madness, about how she'd grown to hate their father. About her little rules like never taking a bath while there was still daylight outside. Showers were fine, but never baths. He told Sherlock how she'd insist on brushing both his and Harry's hair, even when Harry was fourteen and perfectly capable of doing it for herself. One time John had cut it so short that it didn't need brushing at all, but his mother had still spent five minutes running a comb across his bristly scalp.

Maybe that should be a reason why he shouldn't feel guilty for disobeying her. It wasn't like he could help falling in love with Sherlock.

But he thought she might be wrong because maybe, just maybe, Sherlock loved him back.


End file.
